...Christ, is that the female Shepard that won that big vote Bioware put on a few months ago? Looks hideous.

Anyway, I tend to keep my expectations low when it comes to gaming, so I wouldn't say I'm "anticipating" a whole lot. Mass Effect 3 and Guild Wars 2 are it as far as RPGs go, and Bioshock Infinite makes a grand total of three. :P

I tried the Fortune Summoners demo during my Xmas break and enjoyed it. That comes out in a few days, according to the Carpe Fulgur site.

Anyone else curious about Hakuoki: Demon of the Fleeting Blossom at all? It's rare to see an otome game in the US, but it's Idea Factory. That's enough to make anyone kneejerk, but is it fair to knock it before you try it? Hey, if I'd done that, I wouldn't have listened to WASP's "The Crimson Idol" album, which is fantastic. I know it's WASP, but put your preconceived notions aside and check it out. At least Hakuoki doesn't look like typical !F, so it would be nice if the whole package turns out to be a pleasant surprise like Crimson Idol was for me.

And I must admit, Tokitowa is a gorgeous RPG, so if it gets a greenlight for US release, that would be nice.

I'm not necessarily anticipating anything. I'm curious about stuff, but not salivating. I often keep my ears to the ground for the smaller, more obscure stuff, anyway, and that stuff often doesn't have a big build-up preceding it. I like to be surprised by titles that I maybe wouldn't think would come out here, or by something that suddenly comes out of nowhere and proves to be something special (like To The Moon did- while all the cool kids were playing Skyrim or Zelda last November, I was playing To The Moon), or a title that everyone else glosses over but turns out to be a gem, etc.

ME3 takes the cakeAmalurWitcher 2Ni-No-Kuri (waiting for reviews)Type 0 (hoping for a vita port)xenoblade (i might get this and borrow my friend's wii. he hasn't turned it on since august, except for when we played mario lost levels).

non RPG:max 3halo 4RE6[size=100pt]TWISTED METAL[/size]

hopefuls:dragon's dogmaff13-2 (if it's good I'll bore through 13)I'm sure there'll be some surprises along the way

Anyway, yeah Patryk has some amazing ME fanart. I don't blame them for picking him.

As for Fire Emblem, there is NO guarantee it'll come here. The sequel to Shadow Dragon did not, so eh.

By the way? It was mentioned there: There's tons and tons of games coming out this year. We weren't going to sit there and list them all, or all the RPGs that could possibly come over. There is a reason it's called the *most* anticipated games of 2012 - they are the top 12 wanted games among the staff. Certainly not the only wanted games.

MasterLL is a good guy. Probably the only exposure I get on a lot of weird ass games is through his Let's Plays.

MORE than improvement, it's the fact I'm just not IN TO those types of games. Anime humour is dead to me, and the cutscenes from the first two games made my IQ drop. If.... IF the gameplay really has improved, then maybe I'll give it another look. But if the in-game sequences are just as dreadful as before, I'd actually pass.

Anyone else curious about Hakuoki: Demon of the Fleeting Blossom at all? It's rare to see an otome game in the US, but it's Idea Factory. That's enough to make anyone kneejerk, but is it fair to knock it before you try it? Hey, if I'd done that, I wouldn't have listened to WASP's "The Crimson Idol" album, which is fantastic. I know it's WASP, but put your preconceived notions aside and check it out. At least Hakuoki doesn't look like typical !F, so it would be nice if the whole package turns out to be a pleasant surprise like Crimson Idol was for me.

I'm totes excited for Hakuoki. It seems to have a pretty popular following, and the art released so far is nice to look at. Plus, the screenshots of its system shows that it at least has a few more bells and whistles compared to most visual novels available over here. One of my favorite features is a route chart thing, which I wish more VNs made use of.

Other than that, I'm pretty stoked for Tales of Graces f, even if I don't have a PS3. I do plan to get one, and I want to throw in my support, so I think of it as more of a preliminary buy.

Right now, the only game I'm really anticipating is Mass Effect 3. When I eventually get through that, then I'll pick up Xenoblade. That will probably fill up my year right there. I hear The Witcher 2 is pretty darn good, so I'm happy it's coming out on the 360. Not much else of interest to me yet.

I am going to preface this statement with. I love this site. But I was very angry with 1 single sentence in this article. I even emailed the staff about it because it really did bother me, I am not trolling. I will repeat that email in its entirety

Man, you could've just done one or the other and that'd probably be enough.

Anyways... while there's a lot of JRPGs, they haven't hit the highs they did, say, 10 or 15 years ago. Some of that's growing up, but some of it is that series have either vanished, gone down in quality, or completely gone off rails (FFXIII-2 sounds like the point where a video game series goes senile narrative-wise), so while quantity's there, and quality's not GONE, it's not spiking like it used to or as reliably. As for games that failed to make the list, some of it is slipping the mind (though I also feel that Paper Mario is far off enough it could end up a 2013 release), some of it is just stuff only a few people REALLY care about, and some there simply isn't much cause to anticipate. Idea Factory and Neptunia/Agarest could have the most awesome sequels, but people who didn't like the original games or heard about them and are unimpressed have no cause to anticipate.

For games I'm seriously anticipating? Off the top of my head...

Bioshock InfiniteGrowlanser IVMass Effect 3 (EA/Bioware have been rubbing me the wrong way, but I want to see this through to the end)Diablo IIIFinal Fantasy Type-0 (hope this isn't caught in some porting limbo and comes 2013 instead)South Park (morbid fascination)Gravity Daze

There's more I plan to get too, and Xenoblade would be there if I didn't play through the import (and it deserves to be there), but those are the ones I'm most set on getting or at least seeing how they turn out.